How Configuration Management Powers DevOps and Why You Should Use It

15-Second Summary: One of the biggest challenges in software development is to manage system configurations across multiple environments and quickly respond to issues. Our blog aims to explain how Configuration Management (CM), one of the fundamental DevOps practices, can offer effective solutions to those problems. Let’s dive in!

Keeping track of code and software configuration changes used to be a nightmare for developers. The only option was to manually tweak the code, sometimes with minimal documentation.

Now couple it with the increasing collection of software products across your organization. A pipeline added here, a server added there, plus configurations and dependencies that get passed around from one team to another.

But then, along came one of those game-changing DevOps solutions – Configuration Management (CM) that brought a new, systematic method of building and maintaining software.

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As a developer, I’ve been on both sides of the configuration management divide. I've been part of projects where it was a last-minute scramble, and I’ve seen the difference it makes when used correctly.

In the forthcoming pages of our blog, we’ll talk more about it from our standpoint to help you understand why it's more relevant today than ever before.

What is Configuration Management (CM)?

The concept of configuration management in software engineering originated from system management and engineering. The goal in this field is to ensure a consistent performance of the software with a desired blend of product, design, and functionality requirements.

It does so, in layman’s terms, by tracking all the changes to a system’s configuration throughout the software development life cycle. Configure management systems define, change control, deploy, report, and document the configuration of every system item.

If everything goes fine, making changes to the software becomes quick and efficient for developers without breaking the system.

Here's a perfect way to explain configuration management (from Reddit):

How Does the Software Configuration Management Process Work?

Configuration change management in the DevOps life cycle comprises three essential components that make up the whole process – Identification, Control, and Auditing.

Identification – This refers to the process of keeping a record of all the servers, networks, and applications present in your environment so that developers can easily track and manage all the information and changes.

Control – Control means ensuring full control and efficient management of all the settings and configurations of software systems, networks, and servers.

Auditing – Auditing in configuration lifecycle management is about monitoring systems to know when certain settings change and their past status with the ability to go back to a previous version.

Importance of Configuration Management in DevOps

The software configuration management process is important for a number of reasons for DevOps teams:

• To ensure what works in our development environment behaves the same in testing and production.
• To recreate the app’s environment and settings exactly as it was.
• To track configuration changes for easier code monitoring and configuration transparency.
• To make sure the code doesn’t break after pushing to the staging and production environment.
• To automatically scale servers and containers without losing control.
• To define baseline system settings and accordingly set tasks.

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Key Components of Configuration Management

There are several critical components of automated configuration management that work as building blocks of the system, such as:

Configuration Items – CIs can be servers, databases, code, or any other component that developers need to manage.

Artifact Repository – This is a central storage space that contains all types of programs, libraries, frameworks, and files.

Configuration Baseline – When everything is working perfectly, baselines represent a known, stable state of your system or a reference point.

Source Code Repository – It's a repository where everyone in the team can store, manage, and access the right version of the code.

Configuration Management Database – CMDB stores all the organizational data and information so that teams can have a comprehensive view of all the changes and configurations.

Definitive Management Library – DML is a secured library of documentation, master copies of stable systems, and authorized versions of configuration items.

Benefits of Configuration Management in Software Engineering

From scalability to disaster recovery, IT configuration management comes with the following benefits for development teams:

Reproducibility

CM systems enable DevOps teams to recreate any previous state of applications and infrastructure. As a result, the process of debugging and troubleshooting becomes incredibly easier.

Scalability

If you need to scale up/down your applications, CM helps you do that elegantly. Adding more servers or containers means they would automatically configure with the existing ones without the need to individually manage the systems.

Environment Consistency

With proper configuration management planning, you can ensure that development, testing, staging, and production environments are the samen terms of product versions, settings, and dependencies.

Reduced Downtime

Increased uptime is a direct result of using centralized configuration management. Since you have a continuous cycle of data storing and syst maintenance, your infrastructure becomes more stable.

Security and Compliance

The implementation of security policies and compliance standards across all environments is another benefit of using configuration manament tools in DevOps. You can consistently apply security patches and get notified about any configuration drift.

Disaster Recovery

Data security and risk management are integral to the configuration management procedure, whether you have to undo a bad deployment, are facing a DDOS attack, or have a flooded data center.

How to Implement the Configuration Management Process?

The implementation of IT configuration management is a complicated process that focuses on 5 essential steps:

1. Identify Resources

Start by identifying the resources you need to manage, such as network components, microservices, servers, virtual machines, databases, load balancers, or any other system in your current IT environment.

2. Configure Your Files

In order to define the desired state of each resource, you need to create and modify configuration files. For example, developers specify that a particular server should have a web server installed or a database should have particular user permissions.

3. Write Infrastructure as Code

The third step of the software configuration management process is to write scripts or code to automate the infrastructure. The Infrastructure as Code approach involves creating virtual machines and configuring networks.

4. Integrate Version Control

Now, pick a version control system, like Jenkins or Git, and integrate it with your configuration code so that you can document and track all the software changes.

5. Set up the Environment

It's time to set up the environment. After defining and managing the dependencies your application needs, initiate server provisioning and configure the network. Once the server is up and running, install the operating system.

6. Enable Continuous Integration

At this stage, incorporate the CM file into your Continuous Integration pipeline. Now with every code change you commit, the CI pipeline applies the new configurations across all stages.

7. Deploy and Monitor

Finally, deploy the software and use monitoring tools to check the health and performance of your resources. If any issues or errors should trigger a feedback loop, you can revisit and adjust configurations as required.

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Top Configuration Management Tools

Configuration management cannot be possible without the tools. From the most commonly used to the best feature-packed, here’s a list of the best configuration management tools in DevOps:

Ansible

Our number one pick is Ansible, an open-source, agentless CM and automation tool. The best part about Ansible automation solutions is that the tool allows developers to use simple, easy-to-read YAML scripts to define configurations and playbooks.

Puppet

Puppet is a code-driven DevOps configuration management tool that came around in 2005. It defines configurations in Ruby and offers a high degree of flexibility. Puppet has a commendable community, thanks to its service over the years.

SaltStack

SaltStack, or Salt, is an even-driven tool that provides modern configuration management solutions. It follows a master-client setup model and helps teams manage and control large-scale infrastructures.

Chef

Chef is a cutting-edge framework for defining infrastructure a code. It uses a configured client-server architecture and supports a range of operating systems. It also has a rich library of reusable resources and cookbooks.

Terraform

While it’s not a traditional configuration management platform, Terraform is a widely used and recently popular IaC tool that enables DevOps teams to manage and provision IT infrastructure across on-premises and cloud-based environments.

Best Practices for Configuration Management

For the last bit, we have shared a few tips and best practices with the hope that they’ll save you time, reduce frustration, and make the most of DevOps and configuration management.

1. Break your configurations into manageable modules so that the codebase remains clean, and you can reuse the configurations for your upcoming projects.
2. Store sensitive resources like database passwords and API keys as environment variables, not in configuration files.
3. Before the final deployment, always put configuration changes through multiple tests in a staging environment using a CI/CD solutions.
4. If your company needs to follow security protocols, make sure that the configurations align with the desired security framework.
5. Instead of modifying running servers, create new ones with the required configuration and retire the old ones.
6. Document your configuration management process and share the knowledge with those who need it. Ensure everyone in your team has visibility in the current infrastructure.

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Closing the Loop: Configuration Management and RadixwebConfiguration management is the heart and soul of DevOps.The DevOps dream of building quality software faster isn’t possible without proper planning and organization. And configuration management gives you the power to fuel the DevOps engine.We cannot say we know it all. With every new DevOps project, we face new challenges, but always the end results are new learnings and findings. That's what makes us more qualified than the last time; that’s the beauty of configuration management.So, if you want to get started, we can help you. Hire our DevOps engineers to safely and affordably explore how configuration management can give a boost to your DevOps infrastructure!